Christmas trees were originally lit with candles clipped onto branches – a practice stemming from Germany during the 17th century, according to Christmas Designers.
German immigrants to Pennsylvania brought the Lichstock (Paradise Tree) to North America in 1747 – effectively a pyramid built of wood and lit with candles.
Topped with a star, covered in evergreen branches, decorated with candies and pastries, along with shelves for Nativity figures, the open-framed Lichstock resembled the forerunner of Christmas tree.
Nearly 100 years later, Harvard professor Charles Follen bedecked an evergreen with candles in 1832 – this was said to be the first Christmas tree with lights in North America.
The Christmas tree became part of holiday season’s traditions, when the Illustrated London News published a picture in 1848 with Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and their children surrounding a decorated tree with lights at Christmas.
With the advent of electric lights, candles attached to dry, combustible trees would soon be replaced by lights, with the help of Thomas Edison and Edward H. Johnson (the vice president of Edison’s Electric Light Company) in 1882.
Heidi Davis in Popular Mechanics (Dec. 2012) wrote: “Thomas Edison may have been the father of the incandescent bulb, but he wasn't the father of the electric Christmas tree. Edison had ditched the tree and strung lights around his Menlo Park lab instead, hoping to gain a contract to provide electricity to Manhattan. Meanwhile, Edward H. Johnson, the vice president of Edison's Electric Light Company, decorated his tree with 80 specially made red, white and blue bulbs that he displayed in the window of his Fifth Avenue home.”
Electric lights were still viewed with suspicion until American President Grover Cleveland displayed the first White House Christmas tree embellished with 100 multicoloured bulbs in 1895.
Davis said trees illuminated with electric lights became popular, but these were a definite luxury at this historical juncture.
The price of having a tree lit-up with lights involved renting a generator and paying a wireman to light up the tree for $300 U.S. – the equivalent of $2000 U.S. in today’s terms.
In the early 1900s, electric Christmas trees would become a fixture of high society celebrations.
NOMA, a company run by the Sadacca brothers (Albert, Henri and Leon) formed in 1925. Motivated by a fire in New York caused by a candlelit tree in 1917, Albert decided to create safe and affordable Christmas lights for everyone to use during the holiday season.
The NOMA electric company became known for being the largest distributor of Christmas lights until 1968, when the company closed their doors because of increasing competition.
World records for Christmas lights are continually being challenged.
Australian David Richards organized a Christmas tree in Canberra decorated with 518,838 lights, earning the record for having the most lights on an artificial Christmas tree, according the Guinness Book of Records in November 2015. Richards’ creation beat the record of 374,280 lights held a month earlier in Oct. 2015 by Universal Studios Japan.
Richards’ fantastical tree was crowned with a 1.5 metre star comprised of 12,000 bulbs.
